THE VALUE OF ORANGE GROVES. 23 



with the sweet orange, and they took care of them as best 

 they could ; they were so poor that they were compelled 

 to use their own strong arms to cut down trees, with which 

 they built a rude house to shelter them, and the little fur- 

 niture needed was fashioned with their own hands. They 

 managed to live somehow it is easier to rub on over a 

 hard road in a mild climate than in an inclement one and 

 took good care of their trees ; though they themselves 

 might suffer for food, they were determined their trees 

 should have " full and plenty," for they knew them to be 

 the "geese that would lay golden eggs." And they were 

 right. Last year that hard-won grove brought them in 

 nine thousand dollars, and it has really just begun to bear. 



The hard working days of this trio are over, they may 

 take their ease, while a skillful man, at a good salary, looks 

 after their "golden geese," and they have merely to sort 

 and pack the "eggs;" and this, by preference, as wise 

 men who would make sure that the fruit is properly cured, 

 graded, and packed, for, on these important points, de- 

 pends the good or bad fortune of the crop ; what matters 

 it if a grove yields its thousands of luscious fruits if those 

 fruits are rotted and valueless by the time they reach the 

 market ? As we have said, thirteen years ago these three 

 men were penniless, now seventy-five thousand dollars 

 would not tempt them to sell their grove. 



In 1870 a gentleman whom we know purchased a wild 

 grove on Lake Harris for five hundred dollars; now he 

 has twenty acres of bearing trees, and refused to sell for 

 fifty thousand dollars. 



Two years later, another settler bought forty acres of 

 land for less than four hundred dollars, budded the few 

 trees growing wild, set out more, and now has sold land 

 to the amount of two thousand dollars, and holds the bal- 

 ance at twenty-five thousand. 



